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ohwhatamessiam · 6 years

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Self Control - Chapter 9

Summary: After learning that Chris’s divorce might not happen, you’re left with a hurricane of emotions and uncertainty on how your relationship can survive.

Pairing: Professor!Chris Evans X TA!Reader

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: FEELINGS!!!! Language as usual, UNPROTECTED SEX (PLS USE CONDOMS Y’ALL AND BE 18+ IF YOU’RE INTERACTING WITH THIS CHAPTER.)

A/N: I’m back guys! I been working on this one since June while my amazing beta, @fangirlisms-22, and I have been super busy with graduating and work, but our schedules have briefly realigned to give you this ultra emotional chapter, that you all may or may not hate me for. I have no clue when the next chapter will be up, but there’s 4 more to go before this officially ends! Here’s the Spotify playlist for the entire fic.

I love feedback, so send me your thoughts, feelings, wishes, etc!

Tags are open for this story, so send me an ask here to be added to it or my permanent list!

Self Control | Masterlist

After spending so much time with Chris, staying away from him felt like cutting off a part of yourself. He’d become a safety blanket for you as a writer, a way to focus your ideas and creative energy. He always knew how to give you the confidence boost you needed. And as your deadline for Robert grew closer, all your abilities and hope seemed to fade away.

You’d ended up skipping class that Thursday. Instead, you left the attendance sheets in Chris’s mailbox and stayed at home, tucked into bed with your laptop under your fingers. But no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t escape him.

Your sheets smelled like him, he’d left clothes all over your place. Even when you tried to fall asleep at night, it felt like his weight was still pressed against you, keeping you warm. But when you’d roll over, he wasn’t there.

No matter how badly your heart hurt and your body wanted to feel his fingers against your skin, you told yourself that this was better. Giving him time to figure out his shit was necessary.

But goddammit, you hated that nearly every waking thought of yours was about him. And it didn’t help that he’d been consistently leaving you voicemails and texts everyday. You did your best not to read or listen to them, but your resolve wasn’t that strong, and him pleading for you to come see him so he could apologize (again) in person, didn’t help you focus anymore either.

Your short story was due Sunday evening. And you had nothing. Your name in bold black letters and blank page after blank page.

Saturday night, you finally give in. If you can’t focus on anything else besides Chris, you might as well write about him.

As you bury yourself under a heavy blanket in the dark, the words seem to come to you. Your fingers type quickly, ghosting over keys and filling up the empty pages you’d been stressing about for weeks. All the things you wanted to say, the things you wanted to hear from him, they presented themselves to you, mapping out your own feelings for Chris.

You pour your heart out until 4 am, only stopping to go to the bathroom or get another glass of water. When you finally close your laptop, you already know the pages full of your emotional turmoil are probably not publishable, or even fully intelligible, but you tell yourself that when you wake up you’ll salvage what you can.

You roll onto your side, clutching a pillow against your body, and try to pretend that he’s having as hard of a time with all this as you are. That’s he’s lying awake, wishing he could bury his face in your hair and fall asleep with you. Your chest hurts, the same feeling of betrayal tugging on your heart, leaving your lungs ragged and your breathing labored. With its heavy presence, it tells you what you already fear.

That you’ve lost him.

But no, no, you hadn’t lost him.

Because he was never yours to lose.

You managed to turn your jotted map of feelings into something else. A letter from a character, written in a private moment. A letter that would be left for their partner if and when their relationship ended.

It read like a history of these two character’s relationship, detailing their most important moments and their least significant as well. Little things that made them what they were, big things that showed what they could be.

And the narration read as a mourning of their time together. That, while it was good and the writer wanted this to last forever, they also understood that other factors could affect their happiness. That their perfect pairing, the overwhelming feeling of belonging together, could be ended by something outside of these two.

Obligation. Uncertainty. Guilt. Unfinished business. History. Honor.

These things could get in their way. And the writer fully expected them to, why else would they be writing this out?

The piece ended with a heartbreaking lament, waxing on what the writer hoped would happen, that their happiness would last until their natural deaths, and that this letter was born out of a place of insecurity and fear. But the writer stated that they knew there was something else forcing them to pen this. That eventually, this letter would reach its destination.

And the last two sentences felt like salt in a wound: a warm thank you for the memories that were shared, and would still live in their mind. And a sorrowful goodbye.

Tuesday came sooner than you were prepared for.

You trudge through your morning routine and catch your fingers shaking when you need them still. Your teeth chew on your lips until they feel raw. Your heart pounds faster against your rib cage with every mile you drive toward campus.

As you park, an email notification lights up your phone. It’s from Robert. He finished your story and loved the format and the narration in the piece. He wants you to come to his office Thursday to break down the story in person.

Your nerves only falter for a moment, as you exhale a deep breath and feel the weight in your chest lighten for a second. So you hadn’t written a completely shitty story. That meant you still had time to prove you really did belong in the creative writing program.

Somehow, you manage to calm your nerves during your classes by focusing only on the subject being covered, and refusing to let your mind drift to the person it so desperately wanted to obsess about.

And as the time for your class nears, your stomach feels physically ill. It’s clearly just nerves, but every ounce of you is afraid to see him. Afraid of what he might have decided. Afraid that all your fears are right.

You beat him to class and take up your usual seat in the corner. Your heel taps against the floor as you stare at your phone, watching the time count down. The nausea continues to grow stronger in your stomach until Tom slides into the seat next you.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks as he pulls his laptop out of his bag.

You hesitate, your lips opening like you’re gonna respond, but you don’t know what to say. You weren’t sick and you hadn’t told anyone you were sick. But at the same time, you were sick with something that wasn’t illness related.

Tom watches you out of the corner of his eye, taking your silence as a reason to elaborate. “Prof. Evans said you weren’t in class because you’d come down with something. He extended his office hours since you couldn’t be at yours.” You nod, quickly recovering from your confusion. “Since the next paper is due this Thursday, I was planning on stopping by your hours last week, but I went to his instead.”

“Do you still need help?” you ask him, focusing on this sweet kid and not your internal conflict. “Because you can stop by my hours today.”

“I’m almost done with it, but I would really appreciate it if you would look it over,” he gives you the smallest smile, pleading with furrowed brows and puppy dog eyes.

You nod, “I look forward to reading it.” The grin Tom gives you warms some piece of you that’s been frozen for a week. You return his smile, knowing it’s the first time you’ve smiled in days, and your foot slows its tapping. Everything might just go back to the way it was.

As you’re about to give in to this little moment of bliss, you hear the students grow quieter, and you look past the young man in front of you.

The second you see him, your heart feels like it stops, like it can’t handle this moment. Your breathing slows as you watch him walk down the center aisle. His clothes are wrinkled and his beard looks scraggly. He moves quickly to the platform and keeps his eyes averted from his students.

You tell yourself to stay seated, going to him will make it obvious to everyone that you two are involved. He shuffles his papers out of his bag and you see how dark the circles around his eyes are, how large those bags have grown. He hasn’t been sleeping well without you, or maybe he just hasn’t been sleeping well without anyone, and it’s taking its toll on him.

He looks up at the class, his bloodshot eyes distracting from his forced smile as he says, “Today, we’re finishing up our unit on the Modern Era of British literature.”

You drop your gaze to your laptop and try to ignore Tom’s glance your way. The class goes on for another 20 minutes of you staring at the clock, ignoring how tired Chris sounds and how the class chuckles at his jokes. He’s discussing T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets when you finally look up at him, needing to shift and stretch your muscles from your bent and hidden position.

Even with his exhaustion breaking through every facet of his appearance, he’s still teaching the class with enough enthusiasm to make his students forget all those things. He’s switching a slide on the projector, his voice carrying around the lecture hall with such smoothness, “Eliot’s focus on time and the humanity that exists in the world-”

His words drop off as his eyes meet yours for the first time in a week. The blue looks grayer, sadder, and his lips hang open for a moment as his tongue searches for words. You hold his gaze, your heart suddenly sinking in your chest, and you can’t move, can’t breathe.

Like time froze around you two as if you were part of the poetry he’s discussing. You’re not sure how long you two stay there, staring at each other. You can only feel your emotions arresting you. Hope bubbling up, telling you he looks like shit because he’s not with you. Fear pinning you down, telling you this is really over. And that maybe it needs to be. Pride warming your cheeks, since you have this power over him, making him lose his train of thought mid sentence. Panic screaming at you to look away, echoing around your skull that this is not the time or place to hash out your relationship. And unease whispering that this is it, this is your last shared moment, your last silent exchange.

Eventually, someone’s pen clicks and Chris gulps, blinking as he turns back to the class, “-is both timeless and also timely, as World War II began while he was working on the last two poems.”

You drop your focus back to the desk, grounding yourself in your seat. The muscles in your body tense as your mind seeks an escape, your brain telling you that you shouldn’t have come today. Knuckles turn white as you clench the edge of the chair, anchoring your body, forcing yourself to stay.

When you glance away from the faux wood grain of the desk, Tom’s watching you with wide eyes. Concern radiating from him as he instinctively leans toward you.

You force a tight lipped smile and shake your head.

There’s no need for him to worry about you when you’re already filled with enough frustration and anxiety for the both of you.

You hide in your office after class, praying no students will show up after that awkward moment in the middle of the lecture. Every time someone walks past the tiny window in your door, your breath catches in your throat. Fortunately, no one shows up in person, so you catch up on the attendance points you haven’t graded from last week and work on the assignment instructions for the final.

The computer says you have 15 minutes left of your office hours. You know Tom has a class during the first hour and a half of your office hours, so he normally doesn’t show up until your day is almost over.

As you check your email one more time, you hear a knock come from your door. Your body goes rigid as you look up to find who it is.

Chris pushes your door open, peeking his head in before he fully steps into your space. You force yourself to swallow and straighten your back, try to camouflage your racing thoughts and your body’s immediate response to his presence.

He stays quiet until he locks the door behind himself, and you start to tell him that Tom planned to stop by, but the way he looks at you kills the words in your throat. He moves quickly, pushing himself forward and onto his knees as his hands turn your chair to face him.

His eyes are so big and pained, openly displaying his suffering. His fingers rest on your knees as his lips finally move, “I miss you so much.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” you answer, trying to keep your cool exterior, but inside your broken pieces are trembling in your gut.

“You’re more important than a poetry discussion.” Your heartbeat speeds and you swear those words would have made your knees weak a week ago.

You swallow your urge to grip his hands in your own. Ignore your need to lean towards his tragically beautiful face. You can’t give in that easily now, especially since he hasn’t told you where his marriage stands.

“Chris…” his name slips past your lips quietly, like if you say it any louder you’ll break his moment of begging. And if things weren’t as strained as they are, you’d be relishing in his pleading. “I can’t do this. I can’t be with you if I don’t know where you really stand.”

He exhales, his fingers actually twitching against your skin. “And I can’t do this without you. I don’t know how to keep sleeping here, keep pretending everything’s okay. I know this has been an intense few months, but I didn’t think being without you would be this hard. It was never like this with Jennifer.”

You know that’s not a clear answer, but you give in a little, letting your shoulders hunch as you lean closer to him. “I love you, but I can’t be your fall back.”

“I’m-, I’m not asking you to.”

“So then you’ve made a decision?”

He gathers your hands in his, his thick lashed eyes staring into yours, “I know more now than I did before and this week without you has been torture. I know I can’t be happy without you in my life. And I don’t want to have to live without you.”

“Tell me.” Warmth builds behind your eyes as your vision becomes cloudy, as tears fight to take you over.

His tears beat yours, slowly sliding down his cheeks and catching in his beard as he let out a ragged breath. “She can take so much from me if I fight her. She found out about us, and I’m afraid of what she’ll do.”

“I shouldn’t have to be your second choice,” your voice breaks as your own tears burn against your skin. “You two weren’t happy, and that should be enough. I don’t care what she does to us.”

“But I do. She’ll be mad at me. She’ll take her anger out on me, but I care about what she does to you. How she’ll drag your name through the mud, tell the school.”

“Do you think she’d really do that, Chris?” Your fingers slide up his beard, wiping at his tears. “She’s the one who asked for the separation. She’s the one who was ready to call it quits.”

“She was, but when I last talked to her,” he closes his eyes as he rests his head in your hands, his forehead dipping forward. “She acted so differently. She brought up having a family, having the future we always wanted.”

“A family isn’t going to fix your marriage,” his eyes meet yours and you instinctively lean toward him.

“I do really want kids.”

“Yes, but your unhappiness will just be distracted by children. And kids deserve to grow up in a happy environment.”

Chris pushes himself up, his face coming mere inches from yours. “You’re right.” His hands cradle your jaw and his thumbs trail across your cheeks and lips, taking in the face he’d missed so much. “I might have wanted that with her 2 years ago, but I don’t anymore. I want what I have with you, now.”

The words push more tears over, happy tears this time. And his lips find yours. You cling to him, taking in his taste, his breath, holding onto the warmth of his skin. His fingers brush your neck, yours knot in his hair, keeping him pressed against you. Your body feels alive for the first time in a week, and your legs push you out of your chair.

He stands up with you, his hands trailing down your spine as his tongue traces the seam of your lips. You nearly moan from the contact alone. Wrapping your arms around his neck, he guides you onto your desk.

You know it’s wrong. You can’t be doing this now, here. Anyone could see you two, you both could lose your positions at the university.

But you have him back. And it feels so good.

Your laptop gets tucked in a drawer as Chris pulls away from your lips. “The last week was torture without you. I never want to feel like that again.”

A smile tugs at your mouth and you push Chris’s suit jacket off his shoulders. “As long as we’re together, neither of us will have to feel like that.”

He rests his forehead against yours, slowing your attempt at getting his clothes off. “I need you to know you’re the only person I want a future with.”

Tears threaten to escape from your eyes again and your lips tremble. Instead, you crush his lips with your own and undo his belt. His hands unbutton your pants, and you pull back from your fervent kisses only to wiggle them off your legs.

Chris’s fingers trace circles on your thighs, slowly dancing closer to your core. His lips leave yours to trail gentle kisses down your neck, and you try not to laugh as his beard tickles your skin. You rake your nails over the back of his shirt, wanting to rip it off of him.

He kneels in front of you, his fingers pushing your underwear aside. His hot breath fans over your wetness as his eyes lock with yours. He licks a painfully languid stripe across your folds that almost sends your eyes rolling back in your head. But you keep watching him, reveling in how his face looks between your thighs.

As his tongue finds your clit, a small whimper escapes your lips. He grins up at you, relishing in the needy sounds you always make. His beard scratches the inside of your legs as his mouth teases a moan out of you. This time you can’t stop your eyes from rolling back in your head. Your back arches as your hands slide into his hair.

Your legs start to shake and you feel your orgasm building, but you want him closer to you. You need to feel him. Your fingers tug on his roots to get his attention but it causes him to moan against you. Your breath hitches, but you work your hands to the sides of his head and try to angle his head upward.

After a moment, he realizes what you’re doing and looks up at you.

“Chris,” you start, already feeling your muscles clench around nothing. You aren’t going to last much longer. He pulls back, his wet lips panting. “I need you inside me.”

He pushes himself up and you tug his pants off his hips. You line his cock up with your entrance as you stare up at him. He grips the underside of your knees, wrapping your legs around him. You keep watching his face, waiting for him to push into you. A hand finds your jaw, his thumb brushing your cheek, and he leans toward you.

“I love you,” he whispers, mouth hovering above your own. You rest your head in his hand and close your eyes. Savoring the scent of his skin, the warmth of his body, the way his lips trace yours. Trying to memorize every detail of this moment.

He pushes inside you sharply and your muscles tighten around him, your toes curling as your legs lock, keeping him in place. His groan vibrates against your skin, and your arms wrap over his shoulders, using him as support.

You let him have control now, letting him thrust into you at his own pace. Clinging onto him like he’s the only thing that matters.

Because for right now, he is.

Chris doesn’t spend Tuesday or Wednesday night with you, but you do text him and see him in passing. He does his best to calm your nerves about the story you wrote, telling you that Robert wouldn’t lie to you about liking it. You don’t let Chris read the story though. He doesn’t need to see your anxious ramblings on your relationship.

You make it through the lecture on Thursday without anymore awkward pauses tipping off the entire class that you two are involved, but Tom barely says hi to you. You try to talk to him, but he just shrugs or gives you one word answers. You write it off as him having a bad day, and instead try to quell the nerves making your stomach upset.

No one shows up to your office hours, which only allows your anxiety to grow even stronger, but the moment before you walk into Robert’s office, you get a text from Chris: You’re going to do great. He loves you almost as much as I do.

You take a deep breath, letting Chris’s words calm you. You’ve got this. Things will be fine.

You push into Robert’s office with your head held high. He greets you with one of his signature smiles, charming and fun-loving, yet somehow still professional. “(Y/N)! It’s been a while since we’ve had the chance to talk, have a seat!”

You drop your bag next to the ornate wood and leather chair that sits opposite of his huge desk.

“How have you been, Robert?” you ask as you clench your hands together in your lap.

“I’ve been great, but I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving break. Susan and I always go back to Illinois to see her family. Are you going home this year?”

“I was planning on staying here this break, working on things.”

“Ah, of course. Finals are coming up and there’s always grading to do.” You nod and look down, realizing your knuckles are turning white from strain. You flex them, try to shake them out so he won’t notice your stress. “So how are you doing?”

“I’m okay, just been a little stressed. Worried about whether my story was any good,” you answer and give him a weak smile.

“Oh, you have nothing to worry about. I think with a couple edits, it’s definitely going to end up in a publication.”

“Really?” you ask, a smile breaking across your face.

“Yes, really. You’re a great writer (Y/N).” He turns his chair to face you directly, his elbows resting on his desk as he leans toward you.

You let out a sigh of relief. It turned out okay. Everything was going to be fine.

You reach down to your bag, pulling out a notebook to take notes on, “Thank you, Robert. It really does mean a lot. What edits do you think would make it better?”

“I’ll get to that, but there’s something we need talk about first.”

You stop writing to look up at him, your eyes growing wide. “What is it?” He stays silent for a moment, his eyes watching you closely. You’re vaguely aware that you’re not breathing.

“Your relationship with Chris.”

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